Bowl of Dreams

This bowl carries me to places I never in my wildest dreams imagined. Up ten thousand feet of ridgeline—holding on with the tips of ice tools and crampons—far above the clouds to where the air is thin. Across Arctic tundra, tussocks, and bogs. Down rivers here and there, some turbid and erupting from the toe of glaciers, others clear and cold. On bikes, on foot, on skis, on boats we went wandering, striving, and seeking.

This is the bowl that keeps the fuel canister warm. It shields the carbide tips of trekking poles inside a backpack inside a packraft through whitewater rapids. It is a pot lid. It is a cutting board.

There is a problem with plastic—it can shatter when it’s frigid. Thus metal. For vertical dreams that require counting grams: titanium.

Its capacity is a whole liter—large enough for a BIG MEAL of everything because you are like, SO HUNGRY RIGHT NOW! And, it is a mug. I start mornings by steeping black tea for a few minutes before adding granola to the tea, resulting in a sense of ease and energy coursing throughout the body.

The bowl wears the scars of crushing blows, cuts, and scouring carbide jabs. We are trusted old friends. Many lips have touched its edges, many tongues have licked it clean, and we have many more meals and miles to go.

Editors’ note: this piece kicks off a new occasional series called “Wee Object”—brief dispatches from a rotating cast of Alaskans sharing a bit about one beloved object critical to their relationship with food.